Elections expert Rob Richie said Monday that Welch will be fighting long odds in her bid to become Montana’s next superintendent of public instruction.

Richie, with the Maryland-based election research group FairVote, said his group analyzed 18 statewide recounts in the United States over the past decade. Those recounts on average shifted the vote less than 0.03 percent, or by just a few hundred votes, he said.

By contrast, Welch lost by 0.48 percent. That’s more than 17 times the average shift found by FairVote.

Richie said “it would be extraordinarily unlikely” for a recount to change the outcome.